Guest Post: Kay Keppler – NaNoWriMo—This year, once again, NoNoNoNo
Every year I start off with the best intentions. This year, I say to myself, this year I will do NaNoWriMo.
And then I don’t.
I don’t have lame excuses, either. I’ve got good excuses. Who can write 50,000 words when they’re gone for a week visiting family for Thanksgiving? (And if you’re really visiting family, you probably need a week to recover in addition to the week you spend “celebrating”—traveling back to the bosom of your dysfunctional family, sleeping on that wretchedly uncomfortable sleeper sofabed, doing a tutorial for your Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Al on their new digital camera, and then eating that turkey.)
And all that traveling and recovering for Thanksgiving doesn’t begin to cover the demands of a job or whatever else a person has to do. Why take a month that’s jammed up with one of the biggest holidays of the year, and make it even more jammed with NaNoWriMo? Who needs the pressure? I’ve always thought that NaNoWriMo is an excellent idea—for March.
This year, though, I swore would be different. This year would be the year I’d join NaNoWriMo, and I’d cross that finish line first. I’d get those 50,000 words written. I’d succeed!
I had these dreams because I’d made a major life change. Last summer I quit my job to enroll in an MFA program—a graduate program in creative writing. I was free to write! I could—finally!—do NaNoWriMo. School and NaNoWriMo would go together like—a horse and carriage. Turkey and mashed potatoes. Ebony and Ivory. Almost unbelievably, NaNoWriMo would exactly dovetail with My Year of Scholarship. Write, write, write!
But… as anyone who has been in a program like this knows, it doesn’t exactly involve writing 50,000 words in a month, does it? You read novels. You read texts. You analyze. You write papers. Eventually, you write a chapter or two. And then other people read what you wrote and analyze it. You think. You adjust. Then you write some more.
I love it. I’m having the time of my life, and I want to get the most out of it. So I’m working hard. I’m really, really busy….doing stuff other than writing 50,000 words a month.
And of course, I’m still traveling for Thanksgiving. So I’ve got the week of travel, the week of recovery, PLUS getting all my homework done. When do I have time to do NaNoWriMo? I know what you’re thinking: That’s a lame excuse. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. If ever there was a year that I could do NaNoWriMo, this would be it. And still I’m not.
Perhaps it’s not that big a priority. Perhaps I don’t like the pressure. Perhaps I’m lazy. Perhaps I don’t like to write in months that have major national holidays.
Because, really, if we held NaNoWriMo in March, I’d be there. Honestly.
Kay Keppler is a writer and editor of fiction (Zero Gravity Outcasts, Betting on Hope) and nonfiction (Practical Vim, Outsource It!). She lives in northern California.
